http://members.aol.com/porchnus/memorial/reagan01.htm

  am endowed with an almost perfect fit for a profile of a Ronald Reagan for
  President supporter: middle-aged corporate employee, comfortable income that
  exceeds outgo, better off than I was four years ago, stock market investments,
  never on welfare, bemedalled combat veteran of World War II and a dislike for
  increased taxes. Nevertheless, I will not vote for Reagan. Why not? For the following reasons:

      One of the best kept secrets among the members of his senior staff, concerns our Constitution. In light of Reagan's pronouncements, it is obvious that his ecclesiastical handlers and speech writers have deliberately kept a basic historic and vitally important political fact from him. He has not been informed that the Constitution does not contain the words Christian, Jesus, God, Bible or even prayer!

      Were the Framers all atheists and the ratifying state legislators all infidels or heretics? Not likely. In fact, most were religious men with a belief in a Creator. The answer to why those specific words were eliminated from our founding document can be found in any well-stocked public library.

      An interesting place to start is with the 1952 coronation of Elizabeth II. As with monarchs who preceded her over the centuries, Elizabeth II was crowned after swearing fealty to the royal title Defender of the Faith. In contrast, Reagan's 1981 inauguration included his sworn oath to defend the Constitution which guarantees freedom or religion to all faiths and to those of little or no faith.

      The faith which the Queen swore to defend is the Church of England, also called the Anglican Church. This is the same institution whose state-enforced doctrines and dogma forced our early settlers, Pilgrims, Puritans, Separatists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians and Freethinkers to flee to the New World.

  he oppressive, conforming religiosity of the English royal and clerical rulers, the
  domination of one specific Christian denomination enforced by the military and
  police power of the state, the willful murder of high-ranking English Catholics when
  King Henry VIII broke with the Vatican to head his own Anglican Church, all these
  factors were too much to bear with equanimity by our early settlers.

      Ironically, the most powerful and influential civil and religious leaders who fled to Virginia and New England as an escape from religious tyranny, were soon involved in a peculiar paradox. They proceeded to establish their own tyrannical theocracies where they indulged in hanging, imprisoning, banishment and exile for those compatriots who did not fully follow or agree with the dominant, majority Christian faith.

      The gentlemen who framed and ratified our Constitution were well educated and well aware of the important historical facts that Reagan and his band of religious zealots now choose to overlook. If the word "Christian" described a single identifiable entity, there would be a single unified church. Instead, we have hundreds of Christian denominations, most believing that their interpretation, doctrine and approach is the only one acceptable to Jesus.

      From the 4th century when Roman Emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity as the sole acceptable religion for his subjects, power-hungry leaders have consistently invoked the key words Christian, Jesus, Christ, Bible and prayer. In doing so, they managed to spread their most important message to the subservient populace -- "all who disagree with us or oppose us and our rule are, ipso facto, opposing the rule of Jesus Christ, God and the Bible." That incredible theology permeated most American colonies prior to the American Revolution.

      This insidious combination of church and state plunged Christian Europe into nearly 2000 years of unimaginable bloody internecine religious warfare over questions, for example, of how, when and to whom one prayed, with or without the acceptable sacraments, whether "grace" results from good works or faith, the efficacy of full immersion baptism versus sprinkling, etc.

      Reagan's religious handlers and speech writers would have us believe that the Framer's failure to include the aforementioned sacred words in our Constitution is an affront to God. Actually, for more than two centuries after adoption of our secular Constitution, America has blossomed in every respect like a parched desert after rain.

  e have more religious freedom for all, more religious denominations and more
  church-goers than any country in the Western world, all of it without coercion and
  majority pressure. Both religion and science proliferated because the Framers
  made it possible, indeed imperative, to limit our political leaders to their own
  private religious piety rather than injecting their personal dogmas into public policy.

      Despite my Reaganite profile, I would much rather take a chance on the possibility of increased inflation, higher interest rates and taxes before I would vote for this man. His religiosity is frightening. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of porridge. I will not sell my American birthright for the promise of financial prosperity put forth by a leader who might appoint Jesse Helms to the Supreme Court; Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker to head up the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and either Jerry Falwell or Paul Weyrich to a new post as Secretary of the Department of Religious Affairs.